A lady in the hong kong office of a company i used to work for was called 'chlorophyll'. I did look her up on the website to see if she was in fact green, but alas the photo was in black and white so the result was inconclusive...

I find this incredibly offensive. Just because you aren't able to pronounce these names doesn't qualify them as jibberish.

Correct; they are Yoruban names. So unless you consider the Yoruba language to be gibberish......

Since you seem to know the language these names come from(and I mean no offense asking this, I just can't seem to work it out myself) could you give the phonetic pronouciation of those names?

It's driving me nuts.

Our school had a policy for 'difficult' ethnic names. They asked the child/teen to say their name slowly to the office secretary, who wrote it out phonetically and sent it with the kid's papers to their teachers. Occasionally the fore mentioned phonetics had to be shared with the fellow students. And once a name so stumped the school (it had nine syllables and some had no vowels.) that the student herself took pity on the school and decided to go by "Min".

I find this incredibly offensive. Just because you aren't able to pronounce these names doesn't qualify them as jibberish.

Correct; they are Yoruban names. So unless you consider the Yoruba language to be gibberish......

Since you seem to know the language these names come from(and I mean no offense asking this, I just can't seem to work it out myself) could you give the phonetic pronouciation of those names?

It's driving me nuts.

Our school had a policy for 'difficult' ethnic names. They asked the child/teen to say their name slowly to the office secretary, who wrote it out phonetically and sent it with the kid's papers to their teachers. Occasionally the fore mentioned phonetics had to be shared with the fellow students. And once a name so stumped the school (it had nine syllables and some had no vowels.) that the student herself took pity on the school and decided to go by "Min".

For the record I don't find the names incredibly offensive - there was much more to the post that I'm assuming was edited out because it isn't relevent to the pronunciation.

Friends of mine have just had their second child. Their eldest daughter's name is (let's say) "Rebecca Hannah Smith". Their second daughter's name is "Hannah Madeline Smith"

What do you guys think of this - having your second child's first name the same as your first child's middle name?

I have mixed thoughts. It's sweet that the sisters share a name. But I think it would have worked better if both sisters had Hannah as their middle name (so the younger was Madeline Hannah Smith). To me, it's like "Hannah" didn't make the cut as the elder daughter's first name, but it was "good enough" for the younger daughter's first name.

Friends of mine have just had their second child. Their eldest daughter's name is (let's say) "Rebecca Hannah Smith". Their second daughter's name is "Hannah Madeline Smith"

What do you guys think of this - having your second child's first name the same as your first child's middle name?

I have mixed thoughts. It's sweet that the sisters share a name. But I think it would have worked better if both sisters had Hannah as their middle name (so the younger was Madeline Hannah Smith). To me, it's like "Hannah" didn't make the cut as the elder daughter's first name, but it was "good enough" for the younger daughter's first name.

Thoughts?

I personally think that children deserve to have their own identities as much as possible while still being connected to the family. If violinp and I had similar names, I probably would have changed my name when I was legally able to do so. Unless it's meant to start a family tradition, like every kid of the same gender gets the same first name and is called by the middle name, I think that the children's names need to be separate enough that they can be seen as their own person.

It reminds me of my great-grandfather and one of his brothers...imaginatively named William Henry and Henry William. We thought the census goofed and named great grandfather twice until I ran across the other one's (highly unusual last name so I know it isn't a stranger I found) marriage announcement. He married someone who was definitely not my great grandmother and lived at the other end of the state- my great grandfather lived in his same house all his life.

I find this incredibly offensive. Just because you aren't able to pronounce these names doesn't qualify them as jibberish.

Correct; they are Yoruban names. So unless you consider the Yoruba language to be gibberish......

Since you seem to know the language these names come from(and I mean no offense asking this, I just can't seem to work it out myself) could you give the phonetic pronouciation of those names?

It's driving me nuts.

Our school had a policy for 'difficult' ethnic names. They asked the child/teen to say their name slowly to the office secretary, who wrote it out phonetically and sent it with the kid's papers to their teachers. Occasionally the fore mentioned phonetics had to be shared with the fellow students. And once a name so stumped the school (it had nine syllables and some had no vowels.) that the student herself took pity on the school and decided to go by "Min".

The school where I volunteered did this, too. I remember the name "Qij", was pronounced "EE-ah", which I think sounds kind of sweet. I have no idea if the name was common or not in that student's native culture, but I would have tried many many pronounciations for Qij before ever considering EE-ah!